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Getting Started Is Half Done

I don't remember much accounting from high school accounting class. We used a program called Peachtree, maybe people (not me) still use it. I know debits and credits go together, but that's about it. It's not Mr. Hughes' fault; God didn't make me to be an accountant and that's okay. That said, one of Mr. Hughes' life lessons still sticks with me, "Getting started is half done."

There have been many times when I sat looking at a project I needed to start and asked, "Where do I begin?" The obvious answer is at the beginning, you can only start there. You can't skip from 0 to 100, the journey starts at step 1. You can only ever take the next step and the first step is a real doozy because it represents commitment. As you take that step you say, "I commit to taking this step and the rest that follow until the end." Getting started is half done.

Since the beginning of this year I have intended (in the South "been fixin") to restart my blog. I've felt that the conversations we start on Sunday morning need further dialogue through the week. We (maybe just me) need reminders, so here we go getting started. I'm committing to remind myself and you of what's important throughout the week and not just on Sundays.

Last Sunday we kicked off our series "NSFW." We examined the double standard our culture holds when it says, "This is 'Not Suitable For Work' but it is suitable for private." If it's not suitable for work or worship or home or private it should just not be suitable. We must have one standard for every arena of our life to keep us from becoming the thing we hate: fake. We all know fake people, phonies, hypocrites. We all know what we really think about them. Hypocrites are people with two standards, one for show and one for "real life." They have a different standard on Sunday than they do Monday through Friday.

Psalm 101 challenges us to have one standard and to start with that standard in our homes. In many ways this is the hardest thing to do, because in our homes we have privacy. We can do what we want, watch what we want, be who we want to be. Psalm 101 challenges us to rise above this, to rise above the temptation in our private world and to be a consistent person, a person of integrity. The point is this: integrity starts when we're alone. Integrity is who we are when no one is watching and it starts when we commit to being the same person wherever we go.

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I'm an aspiring activist of faith, hope, and love who ministers at Bowling Green Christian Church. I help searching people, find God’s revealed path for our lives, and walk confidently in it. My wife Jenny and I have three children who keep us active as learners of love, baseball, volleyball, violin, guitar, and learning.